


Keep This Feelin' Alive

by liadan14



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Anal Sex, Characters are all 17, First Time, M/M, Pining, Previous unrequited Will/Mike, Recreational Drug Use, Relationship Reveal, Secret Relationship, Set in Summer 1988, Underage Drinking, this fic was directed by John Hughes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:40:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24342928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liadan14/pseuds/liadan14
Summary: It doesn’t strike him as weird until the next morning, when he wakes  up to the warm memory of kissing Dustin goodbye over the handlebars of his bike. Dustin’s hand had been warm on the small of his back, under his T-shirt. Will smiles to himself for a moment, buries his head in his pillow to let the bright burst of joy and excitement out somewhere, and then suddenly realizes that hekissedDustin.Hekissed Dustin. He kissedDustin.How high were they even?
Relationships: Will Byers/Dustin Henderson
Comments: 6
Kudos: 63





	Keep This Feelin' Alive

It’s a gently humid night in early June, when it happens. They’re lying on their backs in the new and improved Castle Byers, at last big enough for two almost fully-grown teenagers, staring up at the stars and listening to Dustin’s radio. 

It’s just the two of them, this weekend; the older the Sinclair kids get, the more seriously their parents take family evening once a month on Fridays. Ever since Max started getting invited last year, it’s been a no-go to hang out with either her or Lucas. As for Mike, well, Will’s not ready to think about that.

Jonathan snuck Will almost five grams of weed the last time he visited home, over Spring Break, and now he and Dustin are pleasantly toasted. “ _Baby, baby, when I look in your eyes, I go crazy,_ ” Will sings along with Eric Carmen badly, clasping his fist towards the sky and pulling it close to his chest in an approximation of the kind of cheesy move singers do on TV to show how touched they are.

Dustin cracks up, the line of heat where their arms are touching jittering with his giggles. Castle Byers is bigger than it used to be, back before that time Will destroyed it, but it’s not that big.

Will grins, looking over at Dustin. A warm, pleased, simple feeling spreads through his chest and maybe he’s passing toasted and heading towards baked as fuck, but Dustin’s jawline strikes him suddenly as really well-formed. Dustin settles down from his laughing fit slowly, and for a long moment that spreads between them like a strand of molasses, they’re just smiling at each other. Eric Carmen croons _could this be just the start?_

From one instant to the next, Will’s got a hand cupped around Dustin’s cheek and they’re kissing like they’ve been doing it for years, slow and sweet and floating on their high.

It doesn’t strike him as weird until the next morning, when he wakes up to the warm memory of kissing Dustin goodbye over the handlebars of his bike. Dustin’s hand had been warm on the small of his back, under his T-shirt. Will smiles to himself for a moment, buries his head in his pillow to let the bright burst of joy and excitement out somewhere, and then suddenly realizes that he _kissed_ Dustin. He kissed _Dustin_. _He_ kissed Dustin.

How high were they even?

He’s supposed to meet up with the whole Party at the pool in…he checks his alarm clock. Less than an hour. Including Dustin. What are they even supposed to do? Will’s only kissed one other person before now, and that was one of the worst decisions of his life. He might have ruined his friendship with Mike forever.

This would be the first time he’s spent ages making out with someone. He has no idea how he’s supposed to act.

His heart is in his throat the entire bike ride to the pool. He didn’t manage to eat the PB&J his mom left out with a note. What if Dustin regrets it? What if Dustin pretends it never happened? How is Will supposed to _know_ how to behave?

Dustin’s late to the pool, which does nothing to settle Will’s nerves. He heads in with the others, too distracted to even care that Mike takes pains to settle his towel as far away as possible from Will’s.

“Have fun last night?” Max asks, rubbing on her first layer of sunscreen. 

Will flinches, then stutters out, “Yeah, uh, we, uh, nothing too crazy, y’know.”

Max peers at him over the top of her sunglasses quizzically.

“How was family night?” Will asks.

Lucas groans. “Erica creamed us all at Boggle.”

“Sounds like a wild time,” Will says.

“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up.”

Dustin comes running up, then, cheeks flushed and curls already sticking to the back of his neck. “Hi guys,” he says and dumps all his stuff right next to Will. A bolt of excitement shoots through Will’s stomach.

“You’re late,” El tells him seriously.

“I overslept,” Dustin says. “Late night.”

He smiles at Will, then, and Will realizes abruptly that he spent all morning worrying about this moment and didn’t spare any time to worry about what he would do if Dustin actually wanted to spend more time kissing him.

They play cards for a while, but Will’s too distracted to care much. He gives up entirely when Lucas yells at him for not paying attention and getting them creamed by Mike and El again even though El only sort of understands the rules. He gets out his sketchbook instead.

He’s thinking intensely about whether or not he wants to kiss Dustin again or whether he’s just flattered by the thought that Dustin might be into him when Max plops down next to him, frustrated with Lucas’s competitiveness as well.

“That’s really good,” she says, peering over his shoulder. 

“It’s barely even an outline,” Will tells her. His friends have this annoying habit of being really supportive of his art even when he thinks it’s barely passable. Three months ago, he couldn’t have been more proud of the picture of Mike, Lucas and Dustin that Mike had framed and hung up on his wall. Will’s not sure if it’s even still there.

Max slaps his shoulder lightly. “Come on. You really got Dustin on that one.”

Will looks down at the drawing. He’d only gotten the outline of Lucas and Max, both facing Dustin while they discuss tactics, with Mike and El’s torsos and heads vaguer shapes in the background. He’d finished most of Dustin, though, gotten his curls and his hands, one holding his cards and one gesticulating. He’s smiling over at Lucas in the picture, but when Will looks up at the real thing, he’s waving over to Will, telling him he needs to come back to the game now Max is gone.

“I’m gonna get in the water for a bit,” Will demurs.

He swims a few laps in the adult lane, a place his friends are sure not to follow. Swimming settles his nerves, he even joined the school team last year. Every now and again, he looks back over to the group. El’s rubbing sunscreen onto Mike’s back. Lucas and Dustin are the only ones playing cards anymore.

Will swims an easy half mile and decides there’s probably no use driving himself nuts. Dustin wanting a repeat of last night is just a hypothesis. And hypotheses need further proof.

(The first thing to make Will laugh, after everything with Mike, was Dustin’s presentation on Newton in AP Physics, three days afterwards. They were all supposed to hold five minute talks on an important figure in the history of physics. Dustin’s went a cool twenty minutes and left Will with an in-depth understanding of where the current state of affairs at CERN was concerning finding the graviton. Ever since, he hasn’t been able to think of the scientific method without thinking of Dustin.)

He lays back down on his towel, dripping but careful to avoid his sketchbook, trying to be at ease in his own skin.

“What about you, Will,” Mike asks. “Any plans for the parent-free week?”

“I was gonna stay up all night Sunday watching scary movies,” Will says, trying to pretend it’s totally normal that Mike is actually talking to him. “You guys are welcome to join me.”

“I have to watch Holly,” Mike says glumly. “What a waste.”

“Summer school on Monday,” El says, equally miserable. High school has not been easy for her. Will winces in sympathy. She smiles at him a little.

“Why are you parents gone again?” Lucas asks.

“Moving Nancy and Jonathan into their new place in New York,” Mike says. “I think it’s, like, a date for Mom and Dad.” He makes a face.

Student housing got more expensive this year at NYU. There was no way they were going to be able to afford it, even with Jonathan working part-time. With him and Nancy each paying half of a studio apartment, it’s more doable, but Joyce and the Wheelers still need to be there to co-sign the lease and pay for furniture. Ordinarily, Will would have loved to go, as well, but his mom had said a bunch of stuff about how it would be a boring trip full of carrying boxes up and down stairs and long car rides. Will took that to mean she couldn’t afford a hotel room on top of the move and didn’t want the Wheelers realizing she was sleeping in her car or on Jonathan’s floor.

Will should probably get on his summer reading. An academic scholarship’s just about the only way he’ll be able to go to college at all.

“I’ll come over for scary movie night,” Dustin says.

“It’s a Sunday,” Max says. “You know what my step-dad’s like about Sundays.”

Will doesn’t, actually. Max never talks about Neil Hargrove except in vague allusions of him being pretty strict about things like Sundays. She’s looking stubbornly at her book, not at any of them when she says it.

Lucas pulls a very expressive face behind her back, indicating that he’s staying home, glued to his radio, in case she needs him.

Glancing over to Dustin, Will says, “I guess it’s just us, then, Henderson.”

“I’ll swing by Family Video,” Dustin says. Will would think he’s totally cool about it, but there’s a little flush creeping up his cheeks.

“Cool,” Will says. “I’ll order pizza.”

“Ugh, I hate you guys,” Max groans. 

Will shrugs. “We can do it again on Friday, when El doesn’t have summer school and it’s not Sunday. Mom’s gone all week and she’s fine with you guys being over while she’s gone.”

“Deal,” Lucas says.

“If I can get Holly to sleep over at a friend’s house,” Mike agrees.

Will counts it as a win in terms of his and Mike’s friendship.

He risks another glance at Dustin. 

He’s not really sure what to count that as.

-

On Sunday, after his mom’s kissed him goodbye about twelve times and made sure he knows Hopper’s number by heart in case anything happens while she’s gone, Will cleans the house.

He feels kind of like an idiot for it. Dustin’s been over about a million times, including the time there were drawings of Mind Flayer all over the house. Including the time they all thought Hopper and Billy were dead for good and his mom couldn’t stop sobbing in the kitchen. Including the time Will had the flu in freshman year and couldn’t stop coughing for even the three minutes Dustin was there to bring over his homework.

Still, he loads the living room blankets into the laundry so they smell all fresh and pleasant. He hides his own dirty laundry in the closet and makes triple sure the magazine he shoplifted when he visited Steve in Indianapolis for the day over Winter Break is tucked carefully underneath the layers of winter clothes in the bottom of his dresser. He even sweeps the floor.

“What the fuck am I even doing,” he mutters to himself as he gets in the shower. The last time he was at Dustin’s house, the kitchen had been a disaster area because of some minor Jewish holiday that Dustin’s mom had cooked up a storm for because she still feels guilty he didn’t have a bar mitzvah. Dustin had six library books more than allowed stacked up on his floor. Will had had to claim he was allergic to gefilte fish to get out alive. 

He refuses utterly to put too much thought into his clothes. It’s ninety degrees out and they only turn on the A/C in the living room when there’s no other option to save on the electricity bill. There are no options besides cut-offs and a T-shirt. He spends the remaining hour until Dustin gets there pacing around the living room, unaccountably nervous.

“Okay,” Dustin tells him when he gets there. “I got us a selection. Nightmare on Elm Street 3, Predator, Hellraiser, and one that’s not horror but that Robin says we need to see.”

“She’s not working at Family Video this summer, is she?” Will asks, caught somehow off-guard that they’re actually going to watch movies. 

“Nah,” Dustin says. “I called Steve in Indianapolis the other day and she was there.”

They watch Hellraiser before the pizza gets there. It’s still so light out that it’s not even a little scary. Plus, Dustin, sitting awkwardly on the comfy chair instead of on the couch with Will, predicts half the twists right and for the other half, the movie would be more interesting if they actually followed up on the wild ideas Dustin suggests.

“Let’s do the movie that’s not gross with dinner,” Will suggests when the pizza gets there.

“I take no responsibility for this,” Dustin warns.

Will shrugs. “If it sucks, we can always switch after dinner.”

By the time they’re done with the pizza, they’re arguing heatedly over whether they should be rooting for Inigo Montoya or the man in black as they duel all over the cliffs of insanity.

Dustin moved over to the couch when the pizza got there, and they lean back against the couch cushions together to watch the rest of the movie unfold. Their shoulders are pressed together. When Westley and Buttercup fall down into the quicksand in the Fire Swamp, Dustin’s hand knocks into Will’s. Will inches his own over, just a tiny bit. 

By the time Count Rugen’s machine kills Westley, their fingers are tangled together.

When he’s cheering for Inigo to kill Count Rugen already, Dustin’s hand clenches tight around Will’s.

“Alright,” Will says, thumb stroking slowly over Dustin’s while Mark Knopfler sings gently over the credits. “Robin was right, we needed to see that.”

“That was magical,” Dustin agrees. “Never get involved in a land war in Asia.” He snorts.

“Rodents of unusual size?” Will asks, grinning over at him.

“I don’t think they exist,” they chorus.

They smile at each other for a long, slow moment. A shiver of excitement runs down Will’s spine. Maybe now is the time.

“Should I put in the next one?” He asks, and immediately wishes he could shut himself up.

“It’s not going to top that,” Dustin says, “but sure.”

So Will goes over to the VCR and pops out the movie. He should really rewind it, it’ll be a pain to do it later, but he’s worried Dustin will go back to the chair if he stays away too long. He sticks the next movie in blindly, not really caring which it is. When he sits back down on the couch, he deliberately settles closer to Dustin than before. He even manages to get his hand settled back in Dustin’s as he gets comfy, almost like it’s an accident.

He has no idea what happens in the movie. 

They make snarky comments for the first few minutes, but with the first jump-scare, Dustin cringes closer to him until they’re almost sharing breath. Will realizes all at once that he can’t possibly wait any longer. 

He turns towards Dustin infinitesimally to press their lips together. His heart is pounding in his chest. Dustin’s hand, the one not holding Will’s, reaches up to cup Will’s face, to tilt it just a smidge until the angle is just right for their mouths to open up, for the kiss to deepen.

Nightmare on Elm Street 3 is little more than background noise from then on.

Dustin’s warm against him as they make out, pressed back into the couch cushions. Will doesn’t really know what he’s doing at first, memories of the last time hazy with weed, but Dustin takes the lead. He slides their tongues together, deep but brief kisses that leave Will wanting more, chasing after Dustin’s mouth. 

“You’re so good at this,” he says nonsensically when they separate for long enough to breathe.

Dustin makes an impatient little noise in the back of his throat that Will doesn’t fully get. “Can you—” Dustin starts, and then just pushes Will back until he can settle himself on top of Will and kiss him again. “I thought maybe this was a fluke, the other night,” he says, and puts his mouth to Will’s neck.

It’s a sudden, sharp bite of pleasure from a place Will hadn’t expected, shivering through his whole body and reminding him that he is seventeen and making out with a cute boy. “Had to,” he gets out, “uh, test the hypothesis,” he says.

“Hypothesis?” Dustin asks, and of course he’s unfairly focused even now with his _teeth_ at Will’s _collarbone_.

“Make sure this feels as good as I remembered,” Will says, and then decides he has to give something back by shoving his hands up Dustin’s shirt, dragging his short fingernails down Dustin’s back.

Dustin gasps a breathless noise that makes Will feel a little drunk on the heat that rises in him. “You feel _really_ good,” Dustin tells him.

By the time the credits on the movie are rolling, Will has gained a thorough appreciation of how sensitive his neck is and how much he likes having Dustin’s mouth on it. He’s also harder than he can ever remember being.

It’s completely dark out, the only light in the room coming from the flicker of names running across the TV. 

“Okay,” Dustin says, resting his forehead against Will’s, “okay, either we need to stop, or, uh.”

“Or?” Will asks, running on exhilaration and absolutely no blood in his brain.

“Or I think I’m gonna really embarrass myself here,” Dustin says, squirming against him.

The notion that this, that driving Will nuts with his mouth for more than an hour, has gotten Dustin so riled up he might come in his pants, makes Will _throb_. If he’s being honest, he’s probably not far away from embarrassing himself, either.

“We could…be embarrassed together,” he suggests. “Or, y’know, be wearing less clothes.”

“You have great ideas,” Dustin says. “I like your ideas.”

 _I like you_ , Will considers saying, but that feels dangerous, so he leans up to kiss Dustin again. 

They don’t manage to get all the way undressed, after all, their shorts just end up kicked off towards the other side of the couch, and then the softer friction when Dustin settles back over Will clad only in his boxer shorts hotwires Will’s entire nervous system into jerking up against Dustin over and over again as they kiss, open-mouthed and sloppy.

“Oh my god,” Dustin mutters against him, “oh my god, Will.”

Will, beyond words, sobs out a noise as he comes, spreading hot and wet in his boxers.

Dustin follows directly after, and Will can _feel him_ twitching against his own spent cock through the layers of soaked-through cloth. 

His heart is still thundering when Dustin collapses next to him.

“So,” he asks. “Good first time?”

Dustin grins at him, his teeth flashing white in the dark room. “Good first time,” he agrees. They high-five.

“You’re staying over, right?” Will asks through a yawn.

“Sure,” Dustin says.

-

On Friday, everyone piles into the Byers’ living room. Preemptively, Will cleaned up again in the hopes that his mom won’t mind the few pizza boxes in the trash and the hungover teenagers that might still be hanging around when she gets back if the rest of the house is in an alright state.

Dustin’s there first – Dustin came over hours before everyone else, actually, and Will’s still got the window in his bedroom open in the hopes that it will air out the distinctive smell of what they’d been doing. He’s kind of been over the whole week, with breaks every now and again so his mom doesn’t think he’s been kidnapped. 

Will kind of feels like he dreamt the whole week. 

He knows he has more interesting dreams than making mac and cheese half-naked at one-thirty AM with one of his best friends, debating whether or not Captain America is a boring character. 

He also knows that he’s definitely had dreams that involved getting on his knees and sucking someone off till they yelled his name, which is what happened directly before the mac and cheese.

When his mom called from the newly installed phone in Jonathan’s apartment on Wednesday to ask how he was doing and if he was throwing wild parties in the empty house, he’d laughed and said, “You know me, mom, I’m boring.” He’d told her he’d been hanging out with his friends and watching movies (true) and that he’d biked to the store to get groceries (also true). He’d lied a little about eating up the leftover peas in the fridge and tossed them in the compost. 

He hadn’t told her that he’d lost his virginity less than twelve hours after she left for New York.

He also hadn’t told her that he had to hang up because he was a little more eager to experience his first-ever blowjob than he was to catch up with her.

It feels like an out-of-body experience to sit down on his couch, a respectable six inches between him and Dustin, and chat to El and Mike about how their week was without making noticeable that his jaw is still sore from what he was doing half an hour ago.

“Okay, okay,” Dustin’s telling them when Lucas and Max get in. “So we watched this movie last week Robin told us about, and I shit you not, it is the best thing you will ever see. We have to watch it.”

“So now you want all of us to watch it?” Max asks skeptically. “I don’t know, it looks kind of cheesy.” She examines the VHS cover critically.

“That’s the core of the movie, that it makes you think that!” Dustin argues. “It’s so worth it, and I can’t tell you more without ruining it, but we _need_ to watch it.”

Max purses her lips.

“Will?” Mike asks.

A little warmth floods Will’s chest at being asked. “Dustin’s right,” he says. “It’s probably the best movie I’ve seen since Back to the Future.”

Dustin high-fives him.

“Whatever,” Max huffs. “I brought us a box of wine, that should get us through this.”

She’s laughing along about ten minutes into the movie.

Will drinks his wine too fast, nervous they’ll be found out and nervous that being here, with everyone else, will ruin whatever they’ve been doing the last few days. He’s already a little tipsy by the time they reach the cliffs of insanity, and Dustin must catch him looking over once too often, because under the cover of darkness and the pile of blankets between them, he links their fingers together loosely, out of sight of the rest of the group.

Their eyes meet for a moment and Dustin smiles at him, or maybe for him. He squeezes Will’s hand. Will takes a deep breath and relaxes. 

Two hours later, Lucas and Dustin are sword-fighting around the living room with breadsticks, yelling _my name is Inigo Montoya, you killed my father, prepare to die_ at each other. Max is trying to convince El that Buttercup is lame because she didn’t get to _do_ anything and El is arguing that Buttercup couldn’t have done anything else because she loved Westley too much. This leads to an argument about whether Westley is really hot enough to be worth all that, which leads to Will cracking the fuck up.

Mike gives him a weird look that Will can’t quite read and leaves the room to call Holly’s friend’s house and make sure she’s doing alright.

At about four in the morning, they’ve finally actually watched Nightmare on Elm Street 3 and they’ve killed the box of wine as well as the remaining half of the bottom-of-the-shelf vodka Mike managed to score off of Nancy months ago, and everyone is hazy-drunk and falling asleep in their seats.

El, who can’t hold her liquor at all, is literally fast asleep on Mike’s shoulder. Will dumps the spare blankets on Mike and lets them be, and he sort of pushes Lucas and Max towards Jonathan’s room. 

He collapses into his own bed and pulls Dustin down with him, door firmly shut behind them.

“You sure I shouldn’t—” Dustin starts.

“Nooo,” Will whines. “Stay here. Sleep.”

Dustin laughs. “You are so wasted.”

“Mm,” Will agrees. “Y’ have fun?”

“Sure,” Dustin says.

Will is exhausted and drunk enough to already be regretting the last swig of vodka, but he knows if he doesn’t ask Dustin what’s wrong, Dustin won’t sleep.

“What’s wrong?” He asks, poking Dustin in the side.

“Nothing,” Dustin lies.

“Dustiiiin,” Will groans. “Come ooon. What’s wrong?”

“It’s fine,” Dustin says.

“Dustiiiiin.”

“It’s a bad time, we can talk about it tomorrow.”

Will rolls over heavily, so he can lie down on Dustin’s chest and stop him from getting away. “Tell me or I’m gonna stay like this all night.”

“You would not.”

“I would so,” Will tells him. “’m drunk, I can sleep anywhere.”

“Fine,” Dustin sighs. “What’s up with you and Mike?”

Will rolls back over and groans dramatically.

“Come on, you started this, I want to know.”

Will digs the palms of his hands into his eyes. “I told Mike I’m gay.”

“Okay,” Dustin says.

“It was a big deal!” Will tells him. “I’d only told my mom before.”

“Okay, it was a big deal,” Dustin agrees.

“Ugh, you’re not appreciating this story.”

“Hey, why’d you never tell _me_ you’re gay?”

Will leans up on his elbow and looks Dustin in the eye. “Dustin, I have some really important news from you. Just in case you misunderstood me sucking your dick before, I need you to know…I’m gay.”

“Asshole,” Dustin tells him. And pokes him in the side. “So you told Mike you’re gay.”

“I told Mike I’m gay, and it was awful. He kept asking me if I was sure, and if maybe I hadn’t met the right girl yet, and he kept asking me how I could even know if I’d never kissed anyone yet, so I kissed him.”

“Oh,” Dustin says.

“And it was terrible, and I left, and we haven’t talked about it since then, but he’s been weird and avoiding me.”

“Well, yeah,” Dustin says. “He probably thinks you have a crush on him.”

“I know,” Will moans. “It’s awful.”

“I mean,” Dustin says. “Do you?”

Will pulls a pillow over his face.

“Because I always kind of thought maybe you did?”

“So what you’re saying,” Will says, “is that you already knew I was gay and didn’t need me to tell you.”

“Will,” Dustin says. He sounds hurt.

“I only ever figured out I was gay because I had such a crush on Mike in middle school,” Will says. “But I always knew he didn’t feel that way. And maybe I kissed him to be sure? But mostly to shut him up. That enough for you?”

“Yeah,” Dustin says. After a long pause, he asks, “Hey, Will? Why’d you kiss me?”

Will’s already asleep.

-

Things go alright for next few weeks. Will’s mom is back, but Dustin’s goes to visit her sister for a couple days and both of their moms are at work all day, anyway. Will figures out that Dustin will do just about anything in bed if Will feeds him dessert; he also figures out that he needs to stop comic book related discussions if he wants to get laid because Dustin _will_ interrupt a blow job mercilessly to make another point. He figures out that he can basically incapacitate Dustin if he takes his shirt off in public, and that if he plays with Dustin’s nipples just right, Dustin will go entirely pliant for him. He figures out that he _really, really_ likes dirty talk.

He even works up the nerve to buy a tub of lotion and a pack of condoms at two separate gas stations, but he hasn’t figured out how to suggest that to Dustin yet.

The month of June is a haze of experimentation, of lazy evenings in front of the TV with their legs tangled together, bickering over reruns of _Knight Rider_ in between learning how to get each other off.

Every couple days, they meet up with the rest of the party for something, either at the movie theater or the pool, or for a long night by the quarry with illegally gotten alcohol. Each time, Will feels himself straddling the line between thinking he’s going crazy (again) and he’s just imagined him and Dustin, and each time, Dustin finds a way to reassure him.

This time, Lucas and Max have just taken off from Dustin’s house. His mom’s still in Bloomington, so they were free to spend all night playing video games as loud as they liked, and it’s only just past two. _Miles to go before I sleep,_ Will thinks nonsensically, pressed up against the kitchen counter by Dustin with his hands sliding down the back of Dustin’s shorts. He’s not even thinking of the long bike ride back to his house, he’s thinking of whether tonight’s the night to suggest going one step further.

He’s just completing a move he’s spent the week perfecting – gripping the hair at the base of Dustin’s skull to move his head back so that Will can nip at his throat – when the loud clatter of the screen door and the mumbled, “Holy shit,” accompanying it makes them pull apart.

“I forgot my jacket,” Max says. “Uh, sorry.”

“Shit,” Dustin says. “Shit, shit, shit. This isn’t what it looks like.”

Will blinks. “It’s not?”

Max crosses her arms slowly, sensing an advantage. “I mean, it looks like you two were about to screw on the kitchen floor.”

Dustin goes bright red, flustered. He looks to Will for help.

Will shrugs. “That’s kind of what I thought was happening, too.”

Dustin shuts his eyes as if begging for patience. “I just meant,” he gets out between clenched teeth, “that she shouldn’t tell anyone.”

Will frowns to himself. They haven’t told anyone so far, sure, but he’s not really sure why beyond that it’s new and he doesn’t really know what’s going on. “Would that be so bad?”

“Come on,” Dustin stares at him as if Will should know this. “You know why.”

He tries to figure it out for a moment, but he ends up shaking his head. “Are you ashamed of this?”

“ _I’m_ not,” Dustin all-but yells. “You’re the one who’s—who’s—

“I _don’t get it_ ,” Will yells back.

“You wanna tell everyone?” Dustin asks. “Fine. What are we telling them? What are we even doing? How do you feel about me?”

“I…” Will trails off. “Well, how do you feel about me?”

“I’m kind of in love with you, you asshole,” Dustin says, and then he just—leaves the kitchen, door to his bedroom banging shut behind him. 

Will takes a deep breath, his eyes sliding shut. When he looks over to where Max was a while ago, the screen door is firmly shut. She must have left. He can’t blame her.

He stands there, in the kitchen, for a while, and then, because there’s nothing else to do, he leaves.

-

The next week is miserable. Will doesn’t dare call Dustin up, not sure what he would even say. Has he been stringing Dustin along? What does he even want?

He knows what his libido wants; it wants to keep screwing Dustin any way he can get him. He’s also pretty lonely, all of a sudden, hanging out at his house alone most days. He misses listening to Dustin’s non-stop commentary of everything on TV. When he has to cook his own lunch, he can’t be asked to do more than make a sandwich. He kind of misses getting to impress Dustin with how well he can do a classic Byers leftover stir-fry.

Lucas calls on Wednesday to ask if he wants to go to the movies, and Will agrees because he’s going nuts, but that’s even worse. Dustin is there, and he’s acting like nothing’s happened, but he doesn’t talk through the movie even though it’s such shit that Will wishes he would, and he barely meets Will’s eyes. Lucas is jovial and ignorant between them, and Max looks like she wishes she could disappear into her seat. Will gets it. It’s even worse because it’s just the four of them, the Wheelers away for five days in Chicago and El gone with them.

On Friday, Will goes over to Mike’s house.

He hasn’t been there in almost four months, since the whole incident.

Mike’s unpacking his suitcase when Will comes in, Mrs. Wheeler’s indulgent smile at his “antics”, arriving just as they’ve gotten home, both patronizing and convenient.

“Can we talk?” Will asks, sitting down on Mike’s bed.

“Yeah,” Mike says, but he doesn’t meet Will’s eyes. The drawing Will gave him is still on the wall.

Will steeples his fingers together. “Things have been really weird.”

Mike nods.

“I’m sorry I kissed you. I didn’t want to make things weird.”

Mike throws a bunch of clothes into his laundry bag and sits down on his desk chair. “I don’t…I don’t feel that way about you,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

“I know that,” Will says impatiently. “I knew that before I did it, I know you love El.”

Mike nods slowly. “So why’d you do it?”

Will sighs. “I don’t know. I…I definitely used to have feelings for you. In middle school and stuff. I’m sorry if that makes you uncomfortable.”

“It’s not like I’m not okay with it!” Mike says hurriedly. “It’s, uh, really flattering? But I…don’t.”

“No, I get that,” Will tells him. “That’s fine. And I haven’t felt that way about you in ages. I was just—I had to _tell_ you, you know?”

“I think so?”

“I wasn’t, like, expecting anything. Also, it kind of felt like you didn’t believe me, that I could know I’m gay without having the experience or whatever, and that was kind of…”

Mike swallows. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that. I just…my parents, well, my dad is kind of mean about…gay people. It doesn’t sound easy. I just thought, if there was any chance you weren’t, it might be safer for you?”

“There’s no chance.”

“That’s okay.”

“We’re still friends, right?” Will asks. “Even if I’m gay?”

Mike springs to his feet and drags Will to his. “Come on, we’re gonna hug it out,” he says.

They do.

Will sleeps a little easier that night. When he wakes up in the morning, he lies in bed for an hour, _I’m kind of in love with you_ ringing in his ears.

He does the only thing he still can. He calls up Max.

He tells her all about it, sitting on the curb two streets over from her house while she practices kick-flips.

“Boys are so stupid,” she says approximately eighteen times. “You seriously just never talked to him?”

“I didn’t know there was stuff to talk about,” he says plaintively. “I thought we were dating!”

“And he thought you had feelings for Mike and were just screwing him.” Max sighs, jumps off her skateboard and sits down on the curb next to him. “Do you want to be dating him?”

Will considers the possibility of never listening to Dustin ruin an entire movie by talking through it again. He drops his face into his hands. “Yeah,” he says. “I really, really want to be dating him.”

“So you need to win him back,” Max says.

“Exactly. How do you do it when you and Lucas break up?”

Max scoffs. “Please. _He_ wins me back.”

“Great,” Will says dully into his hands. “You’re useless to me.”

“Cheer up,” Max says. “I know just who to call.”

Sitting across from El in her pink, girly room, an oasis of femininity in Hopper’s little cabin in the woods, Will becomes painfully aware that he kissed her boyfriend, kicking off this saga. He stumbles through the whole story while Max throws in her own little asides: Coming out to Mike in March, kissing him and running away (“And that’s why things have been weird ever since”); hanging out more and more with Dustin while everyone else was coupled up; kissing in Fort Byers with the radio on (El makes a wild, baffling gesture to Max and Max says, “I know!!!”); watching movies on the couch and making out (“They watched _The Princess Bride_ ,” Max points out, as if Will hadn’t mentioned that); spending all their time together for a full month before Max walked in on them (“I swear to God, El, if I had walked in two minutes later, they would have been naked”).

Having exhausted the story, Will ends on a somewhat lame note: “So that’s it, please don’t kill me for kissing your boyfriend.”

El waves that off easily. “Mike told me about that ages ago,” she says. “I don’t mind.”

“Great,” Will says dully, flushing all over. 

“No, I mean…” El purses her lips the way she does when she’s trying to work out how to say things she’s feeling but can’t quite find the words for. “I mean, I trust Mike and I trust you and I know you wouldn’t do that to me.”

“But I did,” Will feels compelled to point out.

“You just explained you didn’t mean it like that,” Max says. “The really important part here is that Will needs to win Dustin back now.”

El swings around to lie on her stomach, facing them. “Right,” she says. “Dustin likes romance.”

Immediately, Will knows she’s right, but he hates that he didn’t consider that so much that he can’t help the skeptical noise in his throat.

Max is nodding seriously. “Look at the evidence,” she says. “You kissed for the first time under the stars, listening to love songs. He rented _The Princess Bride_ for the two of you to watch instead of horror movies. And also,” she snaps her fingers wildly, “remember the singing? With Suzie? Oh my god.”

Will remembers the singing with Suzie _so well_ , and it pisses him off just thinking about it. “I don’t know how to do romantic,” he groans.

El looks at him gravely. “You kissed him under the stars, didn’t you?”

“I was high out of my mind.”

She shakes her head at him, disappointed.

“So what do I _do_?” He asks.

“Talk to him,” Max advises. “Tell him how you feel.”

“You could try a _gesture_ ,” El adds. “Like giving him something.”

Will remembers a full day following Lucas and Mike around the mall while they tried to find shit to give to El. “Does that ever really work?” He asks.

Max makes a sort of weighing motion with her hand. “Sometimes. It has to be personal.”

They give him a series of utterly useless magazine quizzes after that, but Will’s kind of already made up his mind.

He digs out his sketchbook when he gets home, untouched for days, and flicks through the last few pages. They’re all of Dustin. There’s the one from the pool, with just Dustin in sharp focus and the rest of the group in vague shapes. There’s one that makes heat crawl up the back of Will’s neck, the upper half of Dustin’s body, hands clenched in the sheets of Will’s bed, mouth open. He remembers drawing that one while Dustin napped, the memory fresh in his mind.

He rips out the one from the morning after their first time, when he’d woken up an hour before Dustin and had felt like he had to remember the moment somehow. It seems a little creepy now, in retrospect, but it’s the drawing Will’s the proudest of. Dustin’s sprawled out, his curls tangled all over his head, one arm stretched out under his head, the other tucked up under his side. Will remembers trying especially hard to catch the play of muscles in his back and giving it up as a bad job, but looking at it now, he’s kind of happy with it. Dustin’s not exactly athletic, but he’s strong in a way Will likes, and he can read it out of the picture perfectly.

When he’d given up on the sketch, he’d crawled back into bed with Dustin, and just after that, he’s kissed his way down Dustin’s sternum, still warm with sleep. 

“Oh,” Dustin had said, blinking in the morning light and confused. “Oh, really?”

“I wanna try,” Will had told him, looking up from between his legs. “Tell me if I get it wrong?”

He hadn’t gotten it wrong, but he thinks, now, he should have probably asked Dustin how he felt instead of whether it was good for him.

 _I think about that morning all the time,_ he writes under the drawing. _It was beautiful. I didn’t ask you enough questions, though. I never even asked how you knew you were into guys. Are you even into guys? XX Will_

He folds the picture carefully and sticks it into an envelope. The light is off in Dustin’s room when he bikes past the house, but it’s on in the living room. Dustin’s probably eating dinner with his mom, telling her about his day, reassuring her that he doesn’t actually care about the bar mitzvah thing even if his cousins are all getting one. Will’s heart contracts a little in his chest. He jiggles the iffy handle on Dustin’s window and slides the envelope through to land on Dustin’s bed and hopes for the best.

He’s anxious all night, jiggling at his radio, switching frequencies, but there’s nothing. He falls asleep eventually, trying to think of better gestures. He forgets to change the setting on the toaster for Eggos in the morning and eats his still half-frozen, wondering if he’s totally missed his chance.

The letterbox slides open and shut while he’s wondering if getting Dustin new jumper cables for his shitty car counts as a romantic gesture, and it takes him too long to realize the paper’s already there. He runs to the door, but he can only just see the taillights of Dustin’s car rounding the corner. He grabs the letter Dustin left him instead.

 _I’m into guys,_ it reads. _Obviously I’m into guys, what kind of question is that even, Will? I guess I’m bi, because I don’t not like girls. And I figured it out because of Michael J. Fox. And because of you. When you kissed me, I thought you might feel that way too. It really fucked me up that you didn’t, and if you’re going to jerk me around with pictures and stuff I don’t really know what to do. You know how I feel and it’s just cruel to mess with me like that. I’d like to stay friends, but you’re making it really hard._

Shaking, Will sets the letter down. Right, he tells himself. Time for a gesture.

He pulls the rest of the sketches out of his book, sets them carefully into an envelope, and then he swings on his bike and heads to the mall. He doesn’t really like it there, none of them do, not after everything that happened at Starcourt, but there’s no record store in downtown Hawkins. He sends a silent apology to Jonathan and coughs up eight bucks for an Eric Carmen cassette. 

_I’m not jerking you around,_ he scrawls on the envelope before leaving it on Dustin’s bed. _Meet me at Castle Byers as soon as you can? I want to apologize._

He grabs the old cassette player from Jonathan’s room, leaves his bike by the shed, and heads into the woods. He’s staring up at the sky, too nervous to think of doing anything else with his time, when he hears the snapping twigs indicating someone else coming towards him.

He presses play on the cassette player just in time.

“Hey,” he says when Dustin crawls into Castle Byers beside him.

“Hi,” Dustin says.

“I’m sorry.”

For a moment, it’s just Eric Carmen, _hold me close, never let me go_.

Will swallows. “I’m sorry I didn’t talk to you about everything. I kind of thought we were dating, but I guess I should have asked? I didn’t know I was hurting your feelings.”

Dustin’s got his knees drawn up to his chest. “I guess I didn’t tell you how I was feeling either. I just kind of assumed you were still into Mike.”

“I’m not. I talked to him about it and that’s…not a thing anymore.”

“Yeah?”

“I haven’t felt that way about him in ages.” Will scrambles up to sit across from Dustin so he can look at him. “I wouldn’t have started up with you if I did.”

“I guess I shouldn’t have assumed,” Dustin says. “You were just never really interested in talking about things, so I kind of extrapolated. You kept freaking out whenever we were hanging out with everyone, it kind of felt like you were embarrassed to be with me.”

“I wasn’t,” Will says. “I just have no idea what I’m doing.”

 _Turn the radio up for that sweet sound,_ Eric Carmen sings.

“This is pretty good,” Dustin says, gesturing to the radio. “I liked the drawings, too. Is that really narcissistic of me?”

“No,” Will says instantly. “Well. Maybe? I don’t care. I was just trying to show you that I really, really – I wanna do this, with you.”

“You wanna date me,” Dustin says. He’s smiling. Will’s cautiously counting it as a win.

“I wanna date you so much,” Will says. “I really – I really—

Dustin kisses him then, to shut him up. “You don’t have to say it, yet,” he says. “I know I come on really strong.”

“I do love you,” Will says. “I’m just getting used to the other part.”

They kiss again, soft, like the first time.

“I have to ask,” Dustin says. “Did you fast-forward the tape to be right on this song when I got here?”

“It’s the first track on side B,” Will admits. “But I promise I would have.”

-

They’re lying on the couch together when Will’s mom gets home from work. Fully clothed, because they made the mistake of jumping into sex without talking things out first last time and Will’s going to do this right this time. A little cuddling never hurt anyone, though, and he really likes to run his hands over Dustin’s hair while Dustin commentates whatever’s on TV.

“What’re you boys doing in here?” Joyce calls from the door. “It’s such a beautiful day outside—oh. Hi, Dustin.”

Dustin waves sheepishly from where he’s been leaning his head into Will’s chest. They untangle themselves from each other. 

“Hi mom,” Will says. “I’m dating Dustin now.”

Dustin looks, if possible, pleased and embarrassed at the same time.

“Well,” she says, and plops down in the comfy chair next to them. “How did this happen?”

Will and Dustin trade an uncomfortable look.

Joyce laughs. “Oh my god, I just heard myself. I would never have told my mom how I started dating anyone. You’re being safe, right, kiddo?”

“Oh my god,” Will mumbles. 

“You gotta promise me or I’m gonna get out the bananas,” she threatens.

“We’re being safe,” Will says. “Please don’t do the banana thing again.”

“Again?” Dustin asks, horrified. 

“I’ll never tell you about it,” Will says.

“That’s my boy.” She reaches over to ruffle his hair and Will lets her. “You’ll be careful, too, around town, right? You know what people are like around here.”

“Yeah,” Will says. “Of course, mom.”

Later, when she’s gone out for dinner with Hopper (Will’s not thinking about it, now or ever), Dustin points out, “We are so not being safe.”

“We weren’t doing, y’know, everything yet,” Will says. “And we could be. I got stuff.”

“Do you wanna do everything?”

Will’s first instinct is to deflect, to ask Dustin what he wants, but he’s trying to do better here. “Yeah,” he says. “I do. But I thought maybe you’d want to go slower this time?”

Dustin shrugs. “I mean. We don’t have to?”

“What do you want?” Will asks.

“I really want to know what it’s like,” Dustin admits. “It’s been driving me crazy. I kept trying to figure out how to ask you, but it was like, are you just in it for the sex? Because then I don’t want to do that. Or do I, to know what it’s like? And how do I ask for it? And—

“I’m not in it for the sex,” Will interrupts, grabbing Dustin’s hands in his, “but I’d really like to have sex with you. If you want.”

“Yeah,” Dustin says. “I want.”

“Um,” Will says. “Do you want to be the one to…”

Dustin’s basically bright red at this point, but it’s to his credit that he manages to say, “I wanna try both, but I want you to be on top the first time.”

Will tunes the radio to an inoffensive top 40s station, loud enough to keep his mom out if she comes home early, while Dustin’s in the shower. He gets out a towel and pulls the supplies out from where he’d stashed them in his dresser.

He hopes he doesn’t look as nervous as he feels.

Dustin’s barefoot when he comes into Will’s room, his hair wet and sticking to the back of his neck. He sits down at the foot of the bed next to Will. “We’re sure?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Will says. “C’mon.”

He pulls Dustin up to the head of the bed, gets him settled like he was the first time on the living room couch, knees either side of Will’s hips. He threads his fingers through Dustin’s wet curls and kisses him for all he’s worth.

It’s familiar, and pleasant enough to get heat coursing through him. “I missed this,” he says between breaths.

Dustin kisses him twice as hard.

It’s easy enough to get their clothes off between kisses, normal enough to table his nerves and try to remember all the things Dustin likes best, when Will runs his teeth, gentle, down his neck, when he sucks into the junction between neck and shoulder. It’s so easy he kind of forgets their end goal, slipping a hand around their cocks to get them tight together and leaking.

“Wait, wait,” Dustin gasps out, hips stuttering into Will’s. “We were gonna…”

“Right,” Will says, trying to find his remaining brain cells. “Right.” He drops his head back into the pillows, sucking in a deep breath. “Okay, you’re gonna have to get off for that.”

Dustin snickers.

Will smacks his ass and maneuvers them around until Dustin’s on his back and Will can reach the lotion. “I’ve only done this on myself before,” he warns. “If it sucks, tell me to stop.”

“Uh-huh,” Dustin says. “Just gonna think about you doing this to yourself till the end of time.”

He tries to be gentle with the first finger, circling around Dustin’s hole at first until Dustin snaps at him to do it already. It’s tighter than he thought it would be, even though he’s done it to himself, but he’s seriously concerned he’s never going to be able to get his dick in there.

It takes time, he remembers reading in his illicit magazine stashed under his sweaters. And patience. So he goes slow, and tries to jerk Dustin off sometimes, keep him excited. By the time he’s up to two fingers, it seems a little less impossible.

“Can you just,” Dustin squirms, “just crook your fingers a little towards you?”

Will gets it wrong the first time and a half, but then he feels the wrinkly patch of skin he going for and hears the _noise_ Dustin makes when he touches it. Inch by inch, Dustin’s legs unlock, until he’s sprawled out for Will, loose all over, moaning. Will dares to settle a third finger inside Dustin, trying to fuck and massage at the same time. It’s too tight to move his fingers much at all, but Dustin hasn’t told him he’s getting it wrong yet, and he’s reaching for his own cock, stroking it gentle in time to what Will’s doing.

“I think you can go for it,” Dustin says, breathless.

“Are you sure?” Will asks.

“Yeah.”

Secretly grateful for the lessons with the banana, Will gets the condom on on the first go, and then he’s shouldering his way between Dustin’s legs and trying and failing and trying and failing and trying and failing to get his dick lined up until suddenly it works and he’s falling forwards into heat and stimulation like he’s never felt.

He forces himself to stay still for a moment, to ask Dustin if he’s okay, if it hurts. 

“Little,” Dustin says, “lemme get used to it.”

Will breathes in deeply. _A thousand miles away, what I wouldn’t give for only one night,_ he recites the lyrics to Bruce Hornsby on the radio in his head in a last-ditch effort to distract himself.

“Okay,” Dustin says.

The noise Will makes when he can finally shift his hips in further is involuntary and loud, louder than he’s ever been.

“That feel good?” Dustin asks.

“So good,” Will gasps out. “I can’t, I have to—

“Yeah,” Dustin says, “come on, you can move now, take what you need. God, you look so good like this, Will, come on.”

The familiar swell of words washes over Will, and he leans down to kiss Dustin even as he fucks deeper. The angle forces Dustin’s legs up higher, forces Will tight against his prostate, and Dustin yells. 

“Like that?”

“Just like that.”

It can’t last more than a few minutes. Will’s been on edge ever since it started and it just feels too good, too much. He’s shooting off into the condom before he’s even fully realized it, his toes curling with it. He’s hazy with it as he pulls back, but he tries to be gentle as he pulls out.

Dustin’s not all the way hard, but he’s hitching his hips the way he does when he’s close, and Will ducks down to swallow his dick down.

When he looks up, Dustin’s biting into the heel of his own hand to not scream.

It doesn’t take long for him to come, either.

They’re lying side by side, still panting, when Eric Carmen comes on the radio.

Dustin starts snickering first, but pretty soon, they’re both laughing helplessly, fingers and legs tangled together.

-

The song comes on again the next evening, out the stereo on Lucas’s car while they’re all sitting in a circle down at the quarry, smoking up the last of Will’s weed.

“Ugh,” Max says, “this is the worst song.”

“I like it,” Will tells her.

“Gross.” She pulls a face at him. “It’s, like, the cheesiest sex jam, I don’t know who would get in the mood for this.”

“Bite your tongue,” Dustin says. “It’s not a sex jam, it’s a slow-dance-in-the-living-room jam.”

“ _Baby, baby,_ ” Will sings along, pulling his best cheesy singer expression.

El nudges him in the side. “Is this?” She whispers.

Will nods.

She squeals. 

“Traitor,” Max says with narrowed eyes, but she’s smiling.

Lucas takes a long pull of the joint. “I feel like I’m missing something,” he says. 

“Just some people slow dancing in their living rooms, apparently,” Max tells him, taking the joint out of his fingers. 

“You have no romance in your soul, Mayfield,” Dustin says. “It’s tragic.”

“You have too much,” she retorts. “Also, nice hickey.”

Dustin’s hand flies to his neck and his eyes flick instantly to Will.

Looking back, it’s kind of a miracle none of their friends have caught on all summer.

“C’mon,” Will says. “If we’re doing this, then we’re _doing_ this.” He pulls Dustin up by both hands, _fever’s high with the lights down low_ , and drags him into a middle-school level embrace, hands on Dustin’s hips and Dustin’s own looped around his neck. “ _Take me over the edge, make me lose control,_ ” he sings badly against Dustin’s head.

“Oh my god,” Dustin moans. “It really is a sex jam.”

“Should I have known about this?” Will hears Lucas hiss to Max.

“I _definitely_ didn’t know about this,” Mike mutters.

Will spins Dustin around twice more and then drops a kiss to his lips before they settle back into their space in the circle.

The stars are crisp and clear, the air is fresh, and when his knee bumps against Dustin’s, Will’s pretty sure he’s getting this all figured out.

**Author's Note:**

> Remember how awful being a teenager and not knowing how to communicate was?
> 
> Title of this fic and most of the song references are from Eric Carmen's "Make Me Lose Control". If you want to see an 80s mullet to put Billy Hargrove's to shame, I highly recommend the music video. The Princess Bride came out in theaters in 1987 to basically no success and then became a VHS hit, so that's what that's here. Not sure how long it took for movies to get released on VHS at the time, I was guesstimating. I already had to google the track list of Eric Carmen's Best Of cassette for this fic.
> 
> Max and El ship it hard, in their own ways.
> 
> Also, Mrs. Henderson loves her son to death, but there's no Hebrew School in Hawkins, and fuck if she's going to drive to Bloomington and back every week just to have one more adult calling her to have serious talks about how her son asks too many questions, especially given that Dustin announced he was an agnostic at age eight.


End file.
